There is literally a Wikipedia page about the incident entitled: "Howard Beach racial incident"
On December 20, 1986, a black man was killed and another was beaten in Howard Beach, Queens, New York, in a racially charged incident that heightened racial tensions in New York City.
The man attacked was 23-year-old Michael Griffith (March 2, 1963 – December 20, 1986), who was from Trinidad and had immigrated to the United States in 1973,[1] and lived in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. He was killed after being hit by a car as he was chased onto a highway by a mob of white youths who had beaten him and his friends. Griffith's death was the second of three infamous racially motivated killings of black men by white mobs in New York City in the 1980s. The other victims were Willie Turks in 1982 and Yusuf Hawkins in 1989.
And the same people who did it would have been sympathisers of John Gotti. Indeed I remember them being described as such when I read news reports describing the killings and their aftermath while doing research.
